


like lightning in a bottle

by ApatheticRobots



Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Minor AU, Mutual Pining, Other, Post-Canon, REAL NONBENREY THEY/THEMREY HOURS FOLKS, d...domestic au....?, mild existential crisis, the main plot motivator is a strict avoidance of awkward situations and also a t-shirt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24503623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticRobots/pseuds/ApatheticRobots
Summary: Isn’t it awkward when the guy that definitely tried to kill you at least one time moves into your apartment without you realizing?That’s awkward enough on its own, but what’s even more awkward is, after you figure it out, realizing moments later that you’re not keen on doing anything about it.
Relationships: Benrey & Gordon Freeman, Benrey/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 14
Kudos: 411





	like lightning in a bottle

**Author's Note:**

> rated T for These bitches GAY (and also swearing)
> 
> this could technically be read as platonic. two bros chillin in an apartment five feet apart cause they're not gay. but pride month just started and i definitely wrote this with a gay yearning mindset
> 
> had a friend proofread (thanks nova ily bro) but we're both kinda illiterate so there might still be errors somewhere euhguegh

It took Gordon sorting through laundry on his chore day and realizing he wasn’t sure who the shirt in his hands belonged to for him to come to the conclusion that Benrey had moved in with him. He probably should have figured it out sooner, maybe when they’d started trading off chores every other day in the first place, but he hadn’t and now he was standing completely still in the bedroom (the room that they  _ shared _ ) and holding an innocuously plain blue t-shirt. 

“Everything good, bro?” Came a call from the other room. “You stopped humming.” Because of  _ course _ Benrey could tell the instant something was wrong. Of  _ course _ they’d picked up on Gordon’s habits to the point where they could gauge how he was feeling based on whether or not he was  _ humming _ of all things. They’d been hanging around Gordon for numerous weeks at this point, it’d be stranger if they didn’t.

He hadn’t answered. He needed to do that. Stop just fucking  _ standing there, _ Freeman.    
  
“All good!” He folded up the shirt and set it aside, reminding himself to ask Benrey if that was theirs or his later. The plastic bit of his headphones clicked as he turned the volume of his music up a bit. Music was essential for household chores of any manner. 

Gordon kept thinking as he slowly but surely made his way through the plastic bin of clean clothes. So Benrey had definitely moved in with him over the course of the few weeks that had passed since they’d first shown up in his living room. They hadn’t even  _ knocked. _ He’d just gotten up one morning and walked out to find them sitting on his couch, staring at the wall in absolute silence. He’d frozen, because what else was he going to do? He hadn’t even had his coffee yet. They’d slowly turned their head to look at him, and his half-asleep brain frantically tried to find the nearest thing that could be used as a blunt weapon. It had just decided on one of the kitchen stools when Benrey opened their mouth and promptly told Gordon  _ yo your taste in tv is shit, bro. Why do you have the Office saved to your list on Netflix? _ It went on from there.

They never really talked about it. Gordon didn’t bring up the fact that they’d tried to kill him, and they didn’t bring up the fact that he  _ had _ killed them. He would tell himself that he was going to find a way to approach the topic in conversation. Then they kept talking and he decided  _ oh, it would be awkward to bring it up now, _ and this was repeated over and over until he stopped telling himself anything and just let the idea drop.

  
It was like replying to a text message. Eventually enough time passed that it was just more awkward to answer than ignore it. 

Benrey was living in his apartment. And, with what was probably even more of a threatening statement than that, Gordon realized he didn’t quite mind it. He’d gotten used to their dozing presence across the room whenever he got up for a drink in the middle of the night, or their getting up from whatever game they were playing to open the door for him when he came back with his hands full of groceries.

Hands. As if checking to make sure it was still there, he flexed the carbon fiber hand attached to the end of his arm in the fabric of the pillowcase he was holding. The rest of the science team had been all too happy to give him both a metaphorical and literal hand when the conclusion was drawn that he wouldn’t be able to function in every-day society with a minigun for a hand.

Much like the topic of mutual murder (or attempted, in Benrey’s case) was ignored with his roommate, the topic of whose fault Gordon’s missing hand was went ignored with the other three. 

  
Strenuous circumstances and all.

He finished folding the laundry and set Benrey’s pile on their bed, grabbing the shirt that had caused his crisis and ducking out of the room. Benrey was sitting where they normally were on days they weren’t doing… whatever it was they did when they left the house during the day. Sometimes they had their headset on and were talking to people hundreds of miles away. Today they were playing something much calmer looking than some of their other game choices.

“Hey man,” they glanced over as Gordon spoke. “S’this yours or mine?” He held up the shirt.

They looked over again, staring this time, ignoring the game continuing to play on the television a few feet away. They blinked. In the ensuing silence, Gordon wondered if it was something specific about this shirt that made people’s brains shut down. A side effect of exposure to the Incident, perhaps? Had one of them been wearing it under their respective uniforms when all that had happened?

Focus, Gordon, you’re getting way off topic.

“Uh,” Benrey said after several moments of nothing. “...Mine.”

“‘Kay.” He turned to go add it to the pile. He probably should’ve been thinking about Benrey’s status as his roommate more than he was, but he also knew he had some library books that needed to be returned in a few days, and the electric bill was due tomorrow, and--

“Yo, uhhh, Feetman. Wait a second.” He paused. Glanced back. They’d paused the game and were sitting still with their hands flat on their knees. At first the whole ‘sitting completely still to the point where they weren’t even blinking for several minutes’ thing kind of freaked him out, but he’d gotten used to it by now. (And if that wasn’t just a perfect summary of their relationship…)

“I found…” They huffed. “A place. Elsewhere. Across town.”

“...A place?”

“Yeah. So I can uhhh. Not be surfing on your couch anymore, y’know. Kinda lame of me. Haven’t even been paying rent.” They laughed, but the sound was flat, more anxiety in their tone than humor. “So I’m gonna… get out of your hair. Yeah.”

Oh. “...Oh.” 

Benrey blinked, the first time they’d done so in several minutes. It was probably meant more as a way to convey emotion than as a biological function. “Kinda thought you’d be, uh, more excited about it. Considering…” They trailed off, glancing off somewhere to Gordon’s left. Their fingers dug into the fabric of their jeans.

Right. Considering.  _ Considering _ being a word that held a lot of weight, with just how many punches to the gut could come after it.

“I mean, sure. Yeah, no, it’s great that you’re finding your own place, dude. Proud of you for getting out into the world and stuff.” It was fine. His whole brief freakout earlier had been for nothing, see? A waste of emotional energy. “So… when are you leaving?” 

A sharp jerk of their head, looking up, and Gordon knew them well enough to know that even though it may have seemed like their eyes were directed towards his, they were really looking at his ear or just above his head or something. “Whenever. I guess.” They shrugged, forced nonchalance in their posture. “Talked to uhhh some guy over the phone. Said I could come by whenever.”

“...Right.” 

When a solid minute of silence had passed with no further additions from either party, Gordon made the executive decision to consider the conversation over, and went back to the room to put the damn shirt away.

If it wound up getting mixed in with his stuff, well. No one was about to call him out on it.

That vague ‘whenever’ that had been looming in the back of Gordon’s mind since it was brought up ended up being a week from when they’d had the conversation. It wasn’t quite a  _ gradual _ moving process, like most tended to be. It went more like--

  1. Gordon went to bed around the time he normally did. Benrey was already in their own bed playing around on their phone. He fell asleep with minimal effort.
  2. Gordon woke up the next morning around the same time he normally did. His routine was broken when he glanced over at the twin shoved in the corner that had been Benrey’s and found the bed empty and the covers made. Benrey was never awake before him, and they _never_ made the bed. Just left a messy bundle of blankets there for him to deal with.
  3. Gordon left his room, confused but still a bit too drowsy to realize what was going on. He _did_ realize what was going on, however, when he noticed the PlayStation that had appeared with Benrey was gone from its spot beside the television set.
  4. Gordon looked over at the island, on which sat a folded piece of notebook paper.



The note was hardly legible, but Gordon could get the gist of it. They’d moved out. Just like that. After never even officially moving in.

So… That was that. 

Gordon folded the note up, stuck it in his pocket, and got to work on going about his day. He didn’t have time to linger. Especially not on someone like them, who brought with them chaos wherever they went. Really, it was  _ good _ they were gone.

_ Uh, _ said his brain,  _ sure. Sure, buddy, whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night. _

It took two days for him to sigh and accept that no, actually, it was not. Perhaps he shouldn’t have let them get so comfortable, let them become such an innate part of his life. Then he might have been better prepared for when they eventually left.

Some part of him that was still feeling very betrayed for the whole  _ arm _ and  _ murder _ thing wondered briefly if they’d done it on purpose. If it was one last attempt to hurt him, letting him get so attached then leaving right when it would sting the worst. Another part of him, the part that remembered them holding the door and making coffee on the rare occasions they were up before him and tossing a granola bar at him when he got too deep into his work and forgot to eat, strictly and firmly beat that first betrayed part back with a rolled up newspaper. 

The apartment certainly felt more lonely without them around. Gordon found himself playing music almost constantly, trying to make up for the lack of clicks and beeps or soft background noise of their gaming activity on the couch. He started calling out to ask them if they wanted to order something for dinner before realizing he was the only person he had to confer with about that anymore. He found another article of clothing, this one a rumpled gray hoodie, and would never admit to anyone (including himself) how long he just sat there wearing it. Staring at how the sleeves covered his hands. 

He wasn’t going to go trying to drag them back. If they wanted to live elsewhere, away from him, that was their decision. He could live with it.

He did. For about… two weeks.

Then, at a time far too late for anyone to be knocking on anyone else’s door, there sounded a knock on Gordon’s door. He was inclined to ignore it-- There was a decent chance it was someone looking to rob him or something.

Then the knock sounded again, and he sighed and got to his feet, not even bothering to glance through the peephole to judge whether it was a good idea before opening the door.

...Dead silence.

And then-- “Uh, hey.”

“...Benrey?”

“Yeah.” A laugh, this much like that one not that long ago, full of anxiety. “Uhhhh hi.”

“Is something wrong? Did you forget something?”

“Uh-- not-- no. Just--” A hand covered his mouth. “Shut up for a second. Hang on.” 

If he’d been feeling any less mature, he might have done something stupid like lick their hand, or grab it and pull it away and demand they either get the hell inside or go the hell away. But he was tired, and not in the mood to start an argument, so he just stood there with one hand still on the door like a bit of an idiot while they scowled and tried to make words out of whatever was running through their mind.

“So, uh,” Benrey said, “that sucked.”

He kept quiet even after they pulled their hand away, instead jamming it in the pockets of their sweatpants. They seemed like they had more to say.

“Turns out living alone is, uhhh, bad. Shit. And I figured y’know, if  _ I’m _ hating this more than. Dying. Uhhh, that guy, y’know, he’s probably hating this too. And that if, uh,” pause. Looking anywhere but at Gordon, they took a breath. “If he’d wanted me gone, um, in the first place. He probably would have told me.”

They glanced at him. It was an unspoken question.

He could have answered, told them he wouldn’t have kicked them out even if they’d threatened to kill him again. But neither of them were all that good with their words. So instead he just silently held out his arms. When they just stood there staring, he moved his hands a bit. A silent  _ come on, dude, this is getting awkward. _

They’d probably ruin the moment by calling it  _ cringe _ or something, so he would never say it, but having Benrey in his arms felt more like home than Gordon’s little apartment ever had.

“Cool,” they said, voice cracking. “Thanks, bro. Pretty-- pretty epic of you.”

“Missed you too, jackass.”

Gordon was pretty sure he was close to falling asleep standing up when Benrey made a muted noise and he felt them tense up. He came to the same conclusion they had a few moments earlier when he felt their hand move, pinching the shirt he was wearing.

“Is this my shirt?”

Busted. “Maybe.”

They pulled back, though kept their hands on Gordon’s shoulders as they looked him up and down. Their eyes settled on his face.

“Uhhh looks a bit…”

“...shit?”

A cough. “Sure. That. Keep the shirt.”

They set a hand on his cheek for a few seconds in a gesture he’d almost call  _ tender _ if it had been done by anyone else. Although, given what had been happening between them just a few moments ago, maybe tender was the right word. 

Then they reached up and tugged at a strand of hair that had come loose from his ponytail. There was a light in their eyes, and though their expression was as blank as ever, he was pretty positive they were smiling. “Gonna steal your bed, Feetman,” they said, brushing past him and heading deeper into the apartment, their voice fading a bit as they walked away. “Got a better mattress than mine.”

He rolled his eyes with no small amount of fondness, closing and locking the front door before following. Really, if they just asked, they’d know he was happy to share.

He was keeping the shirt, though. 

**Author's Note:**

> nonbinary benrey canon


End file.
